publishing

For several years my primary role and concern really was that of being the Community Manager for the SAP Developer Network (SDN) which is now known as the SAP Community Network (SCN); I still work at SAP however my roles over the years have modified and adapted but as this year is the 10th anniversary […]

“Who is the customer?” It’s a great question and one that my managers liked to ask when I was a young sales representative. Like all great questions, it got to the meat of the matter with an economy of words that impressed as much by the brevity as for the meaning. The customer’s identity is […]

Nearly everyone has at one point or another thought about a book they would love to write. The good news is that disruptive innovation is flourishing in publishing right now. It’s breaking down barriers that kept many authors from getting their books published and making new levels of autonomy and artistic freedom possible. Guy Kawasaki […]

Selling is hard work. In Sales 101 you need to learn that every customer objection is not a demand for a lower price, though that seems to be SOP for more companies these days. Sometimes a customer gripe is actually of the variety that says this doesn’t meet my needs. At that point what amount […]

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about Apple’s plan to charge vendors 30% of the transaction price for anything sold through the Apple Store (aka App Store). For many things like software and songs I think this makes a lot of sense. If you consider that the SG&A line of a […]

If you read this blog regularly you should be used to my constant carping about the lack of imagination in the music industry due to which the price per song is stuck at about $1. While the music industry in the West and in Bollywood is doing its best ostrich imitation, in another product category […]

There was a point when our family went to a Borders or other bookstore at least once a week and sometimes twice. We would invariably spend up to $100 a trip. No more, and it seems like others have curtailed their book-buying visits too. I just read that Borders has not been paying publishers in an […]

I have benefited from generosity of many, many in the research, interviewing, proofing, reviews, now marketing of the book. So, in turn I and others are turning around and giving back in several ways: I have had book drawings at Sapience Cologn…

I recently chatted with Charles Dominick, who gave a talk at Corporate United’s Synergy event in Chicago. He recently published a thoughtful post on his blog in late April that suggested Purchasing Magazine’s demise can teach us something about insolvent suppliers. Charles opines, “evaluating Purchasing Magazine’s demise made me realize that there are at least […]

Back in 2004 I wrote post called The Death of Consumer Electronics. Wishful thinking of course. My central, hopeful, argument is that we’re actually content creators, not consumers. What exactly do you consume when you take a digital photograph and post it on Flickr? Sure you can sit and watch a TV show or DVD, […]